openDemocracy

Charity information

openDemocracy

OpenDemocracy is a non-for-profit organisation which aims to use “new media” as a publishing and organising tool in order to encourage the advancement of civic education, particularly an advanced understanding of democracy, equality issues, globalization, global processes and participation. We do this by providing a web based open source model for news analysis and opinion.

openDemocracy has over 3. 5 million unique views per year (that is over 3. 5 million different computers per year access openDemocracy), with 1 million repeat visitors per year. We have 230,000 links on the web pointing to the site, and 2,300 of those coming from an “. Edu” (US academic) domain. Approximately 25% of our readers are located in the UK, 25% in the US, 25% in continental Europe and 25% in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

At the moment we are expanding our organization in two exciting new ways. The first way is through our new Circles program. Circles will facilitate live micro-gatherings throughout the world. We will do this by providing a service that "matches" authors and groups; a section of the website that keeps track of meetings; helps with facilitating and running effective meetings, with meeting plans and general guidance. Our goal is to enable 250 live micro-meetings in 2010 throughout the world.

The second area of expansion is through our new Offline program. The goal of our Offline project is to create a DVD version of openDemocracy and to distribute this to schools, libraries and internet cafes throughout the global South in an effort to bridge the digital divide which isolates many people in the global South from participating in today’s important global discussions and debates.